What Christ Will Do at the Second Coming

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and
after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once
to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation
without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await
Him.

So Christ Also

Notice the structure of this sentence. "Inasmuch as it is
appointed unto men . . . (28) So Christ also . . ." The comparison
is made between something we do, die and later come into judgment,
and something Christ does, die and later come to save from
judgment. There is a parallel between our experience and Christ's.
For every decisive experience that you have (like dying and facing
God in judgment), the Son of God has a corresponding experience.
Only Christ's experiences are not merely alongside ours and like
them. His have an impact on ours. His death and our death are not
parallel. His utterly transforms ours. Our arrival at the judgment
and his arrival at the judgment are not parallel. His rescues us.
In other words, the parallel between our life and Christ's life is
designed to show how utterly dependent on him we are at every point
of our lives, and how great he is. He is the strong saving one and
we are the weak and desperate ones.

So it's not accurate to say merely that we run the race and he
runs the race . . . just as we will cross the river, so he will
cross the river; just as we will face the dragon, he will face the
dragon. No, it's not like that. It's like this. We have to cross
the river, yes. And he did too. But he died crossing the river to
build a bridge for us to cross the river. And we have to face the
dragon at the end, yes. And he will face it too. Only he will save
us from the fiery breath of the dragon and bring us into the joy of
eternal life.

So the point of these two verses is to get us to think of the
big issues of our lives, like death and judgment, and then to help
us see that Christ has gone before us in these experiences. And
that his experience of them is so powerful that when we have to
walk through death and judgment, those experiences will be
radically different because of Christ. The point here is to magnify
Christ, and by that magnificence to unleash confident and
courageous Christians in the world for his glory.

Christ's Experience Prepares the Way

So let's look at these things one at a time as they come in
these verses of Scripture. Verse 27, "And inasmuch as it is
appointed for men to die once . . ." Now this is a rich sentence.
God has been very merciful to say this to us. Listen to two things
God means for us to hear in this word.

1. One is that all of us have an appointment with death. "It is
appointed for men to die." Who made this appointment with death? I
surely didn't. I make some appointments that I don't like to make,
like with the dentist or with the car mechanic. But I would never
make this appointment if it were up to me. Who made it for me?

The answer is, God made it. When Adam and Eve sinned, human
death entered the world. And God appointed the curse of death for
everyone of their ancestors. Romans 5:12 gives us the background.
It says, "Through one man sin entered into the world, and death
through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned."
God had warned this is what would happen. And he brought it to
pass.

So death is not an appointment that comes to us only by natural
processes. That would be far from the Biblical view. As if the
world just runs on its own laws without God's daily oversight and
guidance. No, our appointment with death comes not merely by
natural processes but at the divinely appointed moment. God plans
our birthday and our death day. Psalm 139:16 puts it like this:
"And in Thy book [O God] they were all written, the days that were
ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them." A certain
number of days are ordained for me by God. God sets this
appointment, not Satan and not my enemy and not cancer and not
me.

But not only that, God sees to it that we keep the appointment.
He plans it and he brings it to pass. You recall how Job said, when
his children were killed by the collapse of their home, "The LORD
gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD"
(Job 1:21). So the Lord makes the appointment. And the Lord sees to
it that death and we keep the appointment. There is no absurd,
meaningless fatalism here. All is governed by an all-wise,
all-powerful, all-loving God, no matter what it looks like to us.
God makes our appointment with death in his sovereign planning of
all things. You recall how Jesus spoke to the apostle Peter in John
21:19 that the day was coming (the appointment was made) when he
would be crucified like Jesus.

And a few minutes later Jesus spoke to Peter about the apostle
John and said, "If I want him to remain [alive] until I come, what
is that to you? You follow Me!" (John 21:22). In other words Christ
himself decides when and how his servants will die. "If I want him
to remain, he will remain. If I want to take him, I will take him.
You are all in my hands" (See Revelation 6:11). So Henry Martyn,
the young missionary to Persia, was right to say, "If [Christ] has
work for me to do, I cannot die." (Journal and Letters, New York:
Protestant Episcopal Society for the promotion of Evangelical
Knowledge, 1851, p. 460).

So it is appointed to us all to die. And we may rest assured, it
is not man or Satan or fate or disease that makes that final,
ultimate choice. It is Christ himself, our creator and king.

2. "It is appointed for men to die once." But there is another
key word here besides the word "appointed," namely the word "once."
This means that you can stop dreaming right now about
reincarnation. We are not coming back to die again. We are not
coming back in any form at all. The point of the word "once" here
is to stress the finality of death. We die once. And that is the
end of our experience of earthly dying.

Now all of this should have a profound effect on us. Samuel
Johnson said, in 1777, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is
to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully"
(Boswell's Life of Johnson, Sept. 19, 1777). Moses put it like this
in Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to number our days, that we may get a
heart of wisdom."

Surely the writer of Hebrews wants us to hear this word of the
Lord in verse 27 and be wakened from the usual numbness and
sleepiness of our lives. Most people think very little about what
matters most and think very much about what matters little. The
Bible is God's gift to us to keep us from that foolishness and to
make us wise. Wise people are people who have proportion in their
lives. What matters most they are most concerned with, and what
matters least they are least concerned with. Death is huge and
death is sure. And so God is calling us here to think about it and
get serious about it in a way that fits with how momentous death
is.

And After This Comes Judgment

The next phrase is what gives death its greatest seriousness.
Hebrews 9:27 says, "It is appointed for men to die once and after
this comes judgment." Death is not the end of our existence. That
is what is so awesome about it. We are not mere material beings
that simply go out of consciousness and decompose in the ground.
This word from God stands over against the common evolutionary idea
expressed, for example, by William Provine, the historian of
science at Cornell. He says that evolution finds no intelligent
design operating in nature and "no such thing as immortality or
life after death."

According to him "we're produced by a process that gives not one
damn about us" (First Things, February, 1997, p. 32). Well the word
"damn" is a very important word in this connection, but not the way
Provine thinks. When Hebrews 9:27 says, "After death comes
judgement," that is exactly what it means. God does give
damnation after death. And it is the most terrifying prospect in
the universe, that we might be met after death with a holy and
angry and omnipotent God holding us accountable for whether we
trusted him and worshipped him and followed his ways in this life.
That is a fearful prospect.

Hebrews does not leave us in the dark
about what this means. In Hebrews 10:27 it says, "A certain
terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which
will consume the adversaries" awaits us. And three verses later it
says, "We know him who said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.' And
again, 'The Lord will judge his people'" (verse 30). So when our
text says that we have an appointment with death and after death
with judgment, it means that it will be terrifying and a furious
fire and a great act of divine vengeance even on those who claim to
be part of God's people, but are only external Christians.

These are sobering realities. O, may God use them to wake us up
and make us alive to what really matters in this world! Now in
verse 28 the writer makes the comparison between our experience and
Christ's. "It is appointed to us to die once and after that comes
judgment."

What about Christ? "So Christ also, having been offered once to
bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation
without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.

Christ Joins Us in Death and Judgment

Notice for your great encouragement here how Christ joins us in
death and judgment. There is a parallel, he dies and he comes to
the
judgement. But the difference is infinite. Let's see how.

Verse 28 says that his death is "an offering once to bear the
sins of many." We will see who the "many" are at the end of the
verse. But the main thing to see is that the death of Jesus bears
sins. This is the very heart of Christianity and the heart of the
Gospel and the heart of God's great work of redemption in the
world. When Christ died he bore sins. He took sins not his own. He
suffered for sins that others had done, so that they could be free
from sins. Look back at verse 26 (from last week). The last line
says, "He has been manifested at the end of the ages to put away
sin by the sacrifice of Himself." So verse 28 says that "he bore
the sins of many," and verse 26 says that the effect of this is
that "he put away sin."

This is the answer to the greatest problem in your life, whether
you feel it as the main problem or not. There is an answer to how
we can get right with God in spite of being sinners. And the answer
is that Christ's death is "an offering to bear the sins of many."
He lifted our sins and carried them to the cross and died there the
death that I deserved to die. Now what does this mean for my dying?
"It is appointed [to me] once to die." It means that my death is no
longer punitive. My death is no longer a punishment for sin. My sin
has been borne away. My sin is "put away" by the death of Christ.
Christ took the punishment.

Why Is There Death?

Why then do I die at all? Because God wills that death remain in
the world, even among his own children, as an abiding testimony to
the extreme horror of sin. In our dying we still manifest the
external effects of sin in the world. But the inner relation of sin
to God has been radically changed. The death of God's children is
not wrath against them. Paul cries out in 1 Corinthians 15:55-57,
"O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The
sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks
be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
In other words, the sting is removed because the death of Christ
satisfied the law's demand and set us free from condemnation. Death
becomes an entrance into salvation not condemnation.

That is what the next phrase means. "Christ also, having been
offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time
for salvation without reference to sin." There are two great truths
here. One is that the first coming of Christ and his offering
himself to bear the sins of many was completely sufficient. He does
not have to do any more to pay the price for sin or to remove the
guilt of sin. This is why it says here "without reference to sin."
He came the first time to deal with sin. He put away sin. It is
finished. This is the wonder of the gospel. Your guilt is already
removed. That much of the end-time salvation is past and done.
"Once for all at the end of the ages" this great salvation
happened. It cannot be improved on.

But there is more. This is the second great truth. We had to
face the issue of death, and so Christ faced death and bore the
guilt and punishment of it for us. Now, we must face judgment, so
Christ comes a second time for us, this time not to deal with sin,
but to save us from judgment. That's what it means in verse 28 when
it says, "He shall appear a second time for salvation." This is not
an addition to the salvation that the death of Christ purchased; it
is an application of the salvation that Christ purchased. This is
what Christ bought in his death. In other words Christ died to bear
our sin and to free us from condemnation, and the application of
this is the asbestos shield he gives us in the "fury of fire which
will consume the adversaries" (Hebrews 10:27; see 2 Thessalonians
1:7 and 1 Thessalonians 1:10).

This is exactly what Paul said in Romans 5:9-10, Much more then,
having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the
wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having
been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. It's the past death
of God's Son for us that guarantees his future salvation of us from
the wrath of God at the judgment.

Now finally, the utterly crucial personal question: who are the
"many" in verse 28a? "Having been offered once to bear the sins of
many . . ." And for whom is he bringing salvation at his second
coming? The answer is given at the end of verse 28. He is coming
for those "who eagerly await him."

Faith That is Eager for Him to Come

If you ask right now, and you should, What must I do so that I
may know that my sins are taken away by the blood of Christ, and
that, when he comes, he will shield me from the wrath of God and
bring me into eternal life . . . if you ask that right now, the
answer is this: trust Christ in a way that makes you eager for him
to come. He is coming to save those who are "eagerly waiting for
him." So how do you get ready? How do you experience the
forgiveness of God in Christ and prepare to meet him? By trusting
him in a way that makes you eager for him to come.

This eager expectation for Christ is simply a sign that we love
him and believe in him authentically. There is a phony faith that
wants only escape from hell, but has no desire for Christ. That
does not save. And it does not produces an eager expectation for
Christ to come. It would rather that Christ not come for as long as
possible so that it can have as much of this world as possible. But
the faith that really holds on to Christ as treasure and hope and
joy is the faith that makes us long for Christ to come, and that is
the faith that saves.

So I urge you, turn from the world and from sin and to Christ.
Take him not just as your fire insurance policy, but as your
eagerly awaited bridegroom and friend and Lord.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

Share the Joy! You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in physical form, in its entirety or in unaltered excerpts, as long as you do not charge a fee. For posting online, please use only unaltered excerpts (not the content in its entirety) and provide a hyperlink to this page. For videos, please embed from the original source. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Desiring God.